Cheryl Hunt

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University of Exeter

Based on a model developed by Brookfield (1995), a deliberately reflective approach is taken in this paper to the relationship between the author's earlier work in a department of adult education and her current teaching on a course for new university lecturers. As increasing numbers of mature students are being encouraged into universities, she wo...

This chapter explores the place and function of autoethnography in education, particularly in doctoral programmes and educational research. It suggests that powerful gatekeepers, whilst apparently upholding an evidence-base of research that demonstrates ‘quality’, ‘rigour’ and so on, are effectively excluding the ‘self’ of the researcher from the d...

'Human beings are essentially spiritual creatures because we are driven by a need to ask ... "ultimate" questions ... to find meaning and value in what we do and experience.' (Zohar & Marshall 2000:4) The discourses of contemporary spirituality now extend across many professions and disciplines. Swinton (2011:16) argues that spirituality 'names an...

Details at: https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783030665906. This book explores the concept and facilitation of critical reflection and its implications for professional practice. It draws on the author’s own extensive experience to demonstrate how reflective processes involving metaphor and imagery, as well as critique, can be used not only to und...

This article is based on the keynote lecture which the author gave at the Seventh International Biennial Conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS) at the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford, Ireland, on 16 May 2023. The conference title was Spirituality, Critical Reflection and Professional Pra...

The guest of this episode is Cheryl Hunt, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter/UK, Director and Trustee of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS) and the founding editor of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality. Cheryl gives an in-depth account of Reflective Practice and how it developed historical...

Critical Reflection, Spirituality and Professional Practice published by Palgrave Macmillan, July 2021: https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783030665906 Book Cover and Endorsements

This chapter ‘walks the talk’ of the author’s statement: ‘I believe that an important element of reflective practice is to be able to say “This is how it is for me now; and these seem to be some of the reasons that have led me to think/feel/act as I do”’. It illustrates how and why key concepts and personal and professional experiences have shaped...

This chapter examines the complex nature of metaphor, its role in meaning-making, and how it shapes personal and collective worldviews. Pointing out that what one believes may be the product of the words one uses, the chapter highlights the importance of understanding and reflecting on the implications of metaphors and images embedded in what one t...

This chapter is concerned with ways in which practitioners understand and articulate their lived experience, including of spirituality, and how they deal with incongruities that may arise between personal experiences, values and beliefs and the political and institutional demands of their workplace. The concepts of critical reflection, transformati...

This chapter demonstrates how an understanding of spirituality emerged from, and was shaped by, the weaving together of, and reflection on, various experiences, interests and images. Providing practical illustration of learning from and with images, it focuses on the use of John Heron’s model of fourfold knowing to explore the relationship between...

Noting that ‘Who am I?’ is a fundamental but much-neglected question in educational and professional settings, this chapter brings into play some of the ‘dots’—the different concepts and practices—that the book ‘joins up’. Suggesting that an important aspect of critical reflective practice is to look inwards to see how beliefs and assumptions about...

This chapter draws on the notion of a participatory universe which is co-created through shared use of metaphor and imagery; it notes that this is enshrined in participatory research (research with, not on, people) and principles of adult education. The chapter further develops the idea that we each inhabit a unique world that is both shaped by, an...

This chapter considers the nature of reflection and Donald Schön’s seminal work on the ‘Reflective Practitioner’. It suggests that the field of reflective practice emerged as part of a zeitgeist concerning the nature, formation and ownership of knowledge. Ideas embedded in the field are traced back to figures such as Socrates, English Romantic poet...

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3171-1617

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3171-1617

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

A Keynote Lecture celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Vaughan College, John Foster Hall, University of Leicester, 3 July 2012

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

All my Editorials in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality discuss a topical subject and also provide an overview of the contents of each issue.

The purpose of this paper is to query the extent to which academia as a workplace, currently shaped and bounded by work practices, measurements and forms of audit that have largely been derived from models of business and management, enables new academics to heed their ‘vocation’. The paper will take a reflexive approach, informed by the author’s o...

This paper tells the story of a personal journey towards an understanding of spirituality. It begins in the context of the author’s professional practice as a community educator in the 1980s and ends with brief reflections on her current work with postgraduate students who are also professional educators and researchers in universities and other ed...

This paper looks back to the roots of adult education and their links with spirituality in order to look forward to a debate that urgently needs to take place within the context of university education: a context that seems to be dominated by economic discourses; diminished by ‘inadequate frameworks and impoverishing assumptions for academic work’;...

The authors, all tutors on a Certificate in Academic Practice for early career academics at a small research-intensive university, reflect on some of the writings generated from the course. These focus on participants’ multiple roles as learners, teachers and researchers in the context of contemporary UK higher education. Participants are free to s...

This chapter is based on a personal journey. It begins with reflections on the development of a module on reflective practice within a Masters degree and ends with discussion of issues arising from an ESRC seminar series that I convened on 'Researching spirituality as a dimension of lifelong learning'. It suggests that, especially for those who hav...

This paper explores the place and function of autoethnography in education, particularly in doctoral programmes, and in educational research. It suggests that powerful gatekeepers, whilst apparently upholding an evidence-base of research that demonstrates ‘quality’, ‘rigour’ and so on, are effectively excluding the ‘self’ of the researcher from the...

This paper links two models - one of orientations to reflective practice, the other of an holistic epistemology - with empirical evidence from seminars exploring spirituality as a dimension of lifelong learning. It highlights a need for better integration within adult education and other professions of spiritual knowledge and understanding.

Using an autoethnographic approach and drawing on principles of reflective practice, this paper illustrates how a long‐standing professional involvement in community education evolved into a personal search for meaning that included engagement with the concept of spirituality. It re‐views typologies of community education developed in the UK in the...

In this chapter I explore the notion of ‘wyrd’ knowledge as a felt experience of interconnectedness. Using a reflective practice approach, incorporating what are, to me, the new ‘lenses’ of mythopoesis and mythogenesis, I review some of my earlier ideas and their links with spirituality. Drawing on evidence from a seminar series in the UK funded by...

This qualitative research study, focusing on the learning and change of two trainee therapists over a nine-month period, was conducted by the trainees themselves. In collecting and analysing their data, the researchers made use of the heuristic methodology, to which some of the principles of the co-operative inquiry methodology were added. The find...

This paper draws on imagery from T.S.Eliot to explore the role of the adult educator and the place of adult education within a newly-emerging discourse of spirituality. It suggests that spirituality is a discourse that no adult educator should now ignore

This paper reports on a two-year funded seminar series in the UK. This highlighted two distinct 'locations' of spirituality and the need to recognise different 'ways of knowing' when working in this field. It also raised questions about what it might mean to research spiritually.

This paper illustrates how metaphor can provide a vital link between the private and often idiosyncratic world of ‘felt‐reality’ and the propositional world of theories and constructs in which most academic and professional discourses are conducted. Drawing on Schön’s concept of reflection as ‘seeing‐as’ and Heron’s model of ‘ways of knowing’, it s...

This paper is based on a seminar series funded between January 2004 and December 2005 by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) entitled Researching spirituality as a dimension of lifelong learning.

Aims i. To develop, through a series of seminars bringing together educators and researchers from a number of different disciplines and professional backgrounds, a forum for debating the function of spirituality in, and its implications for, lifelong learning. ii. Within this forum, to explore understandings of spirituality and of research methodol...

This paper is based on a personal journey. It begins with reflections on the development of a module on reflective practice within a Masters degree and ends with discussion of issues arising from a seminar series on researching spirituality as a dimension of lifelong learning. It suggests that, especially for those who have a 'transpersonal orienta...

The title of this paper is derived from Marilyn Ferguson’s (1988) The Aquarian Conspiracy, (first published in 1980) from which the quotations above are drawn. It is twenty years since I first read her book, in the summer of 1985, alongside Peter Russell’s The Awakening Earth (1984) and Alvin Toffler’s (1981) The Third Wave. Since then, the ideas a...

This paper questions whether traditional adult education values have a place, or can survive, within an increasingly marketised, university sector.

Four separate entries in the International Encyclopedia of Adult Education: 1. Adult 2. Community Education 3. Meaning-Making 4. Multiple Intelligences

Having read the chapter you will: - understand the nature of reflective practice; - be able to 'reflect' on thoughts, attitudes and behaviour; - understand single and double-loop learning; and - understand the role of reflection in professional practice.

The Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults [SCUTREA], held at the University of Sheffield, UK, July 2004. Edited by Cheryl Hunt

This is the Editorial to 'Whose Story Now? (Re)generating research in adult learning and teaching' (The Edited Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults [SCUTREA], held at the University of Sheffield, UK, July 2004)

This paper is intended to open a debate about the legitimacy of spirituality as a ‘proper’ field of study for practitioners and researchers in adult education

Using earlier work in Derbyshire (Hunt 1999b) as the basis for a case study, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the altered states of adult/community educators in the county as changes in local and national educational policy affected the structures within which they were required to work, as well as the very nature of their jobs. Drawing on...

ABSTRACT Making liberal use of metaphor, this paper attempts to articulate the felt reality of 'doing' reflective practice and of facilitating reflective processes for others. It highlights a number of questions and issues that arose during the development of a module, entitled 'Becoming a Reflective Practitioner', as part of a Masters degree progr...

This article is concerned with the processes that lie between the sensing of an idea and its subsequent presentation in a written 'academic' style. It is based on the experience of writing a PhD thesis that set out to explore a 'felt-reality' concerning the relationship between community education and spirituality. Central to the paper is the descr...

This paper indicates how the author’s previous papers, though ostensibly on different topics, represent way-markers on an ontological journey involving a struggle to articulate a felt-reality now understood as spirituality. It illustrates how this understanding has emerged from reflective practice in which metaphor has played a vital part.

Although many of adult education’s operational principles can be traced back to the spiritual values of its pioneers, spirituality is, in general, a place where adult education does not go. Many adult learners and educators are, nevertheless, actively seeking meaning and new parameters for their lives in exactly that place. Within their personal le...

This article suggests that encouraging students to get in touch with their own different 'ways of knowing', which often go unacknowledged in academia, can lead to a better understanding of spirituality and contribute to wellbeing.

This paper suggests that the UK government's current view of lifelong learning is shaped by an 'economistic' discourse that emphasises the development of human capital. The view is likened to the 'candlestick' of a familiar Figure/Ground diagram. The paper provides a reminder of the diagram's 'faces' aspect: of lifelong learning in the context of c...

This thesis has three strands: 1. an investigation into policy and practice in community education, with particular reference to Derbyshire (a county in the English Midlands); 2. an exploration of a rationale for setting debate about the concept of community/ education within a discourse of spirituality; 3. an autobiographical/reflective narrative...

This paper argues that existing typologies of community education are underpinned by three specific discourses. It suggests that the time is right to introduce a discourse of spirituality, and illustrates how this might be modelled. Based on work-in-progress, it invites consideration of spirituality as ‘deep ecological awareness’, and of possible i...

Presents a case study illustrating practical management and quality issues which have underpinned the transition of a Master of Education course from a traditional to a distance learning format. The background and development of the course are described, including the rationale for, personal experience and some consequences of, “translating” tradit...

This article stems from reflective practice undertaken by the author. It represents an attempt to bring together some of the questions which occurred to her about the nature of community education when she worked as a practitioner in that field with more recent considerations about the ‘taken for granteds’ of her present professional practice as a...

This article is based on tutors’ experiences of developing and facilitating a module on reflective practice as an assessed element of a distance learning Masters degree programme in Continuing Education. The article refers briefly to some of the literature on reflective practice and takes issue with the idea that its introduction into an academic p...

This paper stems from a larger project which documents the implementation and progress of a policy for community education in Derbyshire. The paper discusses the theoretical and social context which gave rise to the policy; the concept of community education; and the nature of the Derbyshire model. The title derives from the idea that the difficult...